Comparative Philology and the Historical Semiotics of Qur'anic Lexemes: An Etymological, Cross-Linguistic, and Semantic Change Study of Qur'anic Vocabulary

This study aims to develop a philological framework for the comparative study of Qur’anic lexemes in relation to other languages. It examines ten Qur’anic words—Injīl (Gospel), Firdaws (Paradise), Sakīnah (tranquility), Furqān (criterion), Ṣirāṭ (path), Qisṭās (balance or measuring instrument), Mishkāt (niche), Sijjīl (baked clay or stones of punishment), Raḥmān (the Most Merciful), and Abb (pasture or vegetation)—from historical, etymological, and semantic perspectives. Employing a descriptive-analytical approach and comparative philological methods, the study investigates the forms of these words, their Qur’anic usage, their possible cognates in Semitic, Greek, and Iranian languages, hypotheses concerning historical transmission, and processes of semantic change. Within this framework, linguistic cognacy, direct and indirect borrowing, formal similarity, and semantic development are treated as distinct phenomena.

The findings indicate that the etymological status of the selected lexemes varies considerably. The historical relationship between Injīl and the Greek lexical family, as well as the connections between Firdaws and Iranian and Greek linguistic traditions, warrant further investigation. By contrast, competing hypotheses remain concerning Furqān and Sijjīl, while the origins of certain words, including Mishkāt and Abb, require more thoroughly documented examination. Furthermore, the comparison of Sakīnah and Raḥmān demonstrates that shared Semitic roots should not be conflated with direct borrowing or with the historical transmission of a religious concept. Overall, the study emphasizes the need to integrate linguistic and historical evidence with contextual analysis of the Qur’anic text and the conceptual relationships among its lexemes. Its methodological conclusion is that lexical resemblance alone is insufficient to establish a foreign origin; each etymological hypothesis must instead be evaluated against phonological, semantic, historical, and textual evidence. The study proposes a preliminary framework for developing independent, evidence-based philological dossiers for Qur’anic lexemes.